Tech Question Wing Alignment
#1

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I am looking at a Stik that has been crashed and rebuilt. WS 72" Fuse L 60" When I measure from the wing tip to the tail on both sides there is a 3/4" difference. The wing is level with the fuse, just angled slightly. How will this affect straight and level flight. Seems like it might have a tendency to dip a wing. Thoughts and comments appreciated.
#3

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I am looking at a Stik that has been crashed and rebuilt. WS 72" Fuse L 60" When I measure from the wing tip to the tail on both sides there is a 3/4" difference. The wing is level with the fuse, just angled slightly. How will this affect straight and level flight. Seems like it might have a tendency to dip a wing. Thoughts and comments appreciated.
good luck
#4

I agree with the fixit club. One way to go about this is to drill new bolt holes in the wing. To do this align the wing as it should be with no bolts in place. Put some alignment marks on the wing and fuselage so you can keep tack of where it should be. To mate up with the existing mounting holes in the fuselage take a couple of wing bolts and cut the heads off. Grind the shank of the bolts into a point.and thread them into the fuselage so that the points stand just high enough to poke the wing. Assemble the wing to the fuselage using your previously made alignment marks to locate the wing and press the wing onto the sharp points. The dimples produced should show you where the wing mount bolt holes should be. Now for the finicky bit, 3/4 inch at the wing tip doesn't translate to much movement at the center section trailing edge. You may not need to shift the wing enough to completely clear the existing hole. My SWAG is that you will only need to move the hole by about 1/8 inch, only about half the diameter of the usual 1//4-20 wing bolt. Ordinarily you could just glue a plug into the old hole but the problem in this case is that you would be trying to drill a new hole with the bit right on the glue line. Since the glue will harden the wood the bit is likely to wander and you end up right back where you started. If you have enough material and room to work the easiest thing is just to drill a new wing mount hole right next to the old one, tap it and fill in the old hole. If that isn't practical you can take a chainsaw file and open the existing hole sideways enough to shift the wing to where it needs to be. You can then back fill the remnants of the old hole with some balsa to keep the wing from shifting. You can take a rectangular pieced of 1/16 plywood and cover it to match the wing and use it to reinforce the new holes. If you do a neat job on the plate you can pretend it was supposed to be that way all along.